Baseball Agent Jamie Murphy Opened Up To Buster Olney About His Practice

According to baseball agent Jamie Murphy, Baltimore Orioles right fielder Nick Markakis was approached by the Orioles about a year before his current deal was reached. Photo Credit: Debby Wong-USA TODAY Sports

About living in Vermont, Murphy said, “this day and age, you can work from anywhere, so we’re trying.”

How did Murphy get into the agent business? He went to law school at Boston College and represented a few players in the Canadian Football League to get some experience. He managed to turn that into an internship at an agency. He says it did take him a while to get his career going. “I didn’t want to be a lawyer, I wanted to be a sports agent.”

Murphy said that in any sport, a young agent should lean on the players’ association for assistance.

The type of assistance from a players’ association varies. Murphy says that in a straight arbitration case, the players’ association is going to help, wants to be involved and needs to be involved.

He said, “As an agent, you have a lot of information that you have to sort through.”

Murphy says he typically waits for General Managers to reach out to him to talk about long term deals for clients.

He describes himself as a very easygoing guy.

The longest negotiation he had was for Nick Markakis. The Orioles approached him about a year before a deal was reached.

All of Murphy’s clients want to be educated on their negotiations. They sometimes want updates two-to-three times per day.

Murphy says he works more off of referrals at this point of his career, but admits that he used to be a fairly aggressive recruiter. For him, aggressive meant a handful of guys per year. Now he does not reach out to more than two-to-three guys per year.

Murphy says there seems to be a lot more players changing agents and client stealing in basketball and football. He believes it is not nearly as big of a problem in baseball and thinks that oftentimes players leave inexperienced agents for more experienced ones.